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Saturday, August 18, 2012

The Act of Killing

Will someone get Errol Morris on the phone, please?

I want to know what attracted a filmmaker of his caliber and
reputation (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter,
Jr.) into executive producing Genocide: The Musical, also known as The
Act of Killing, starring Anwar Congo and his kooky death squad buddies.

NO! I have not yet seen this film. Has anybody? I won’t be going to the
Toronto International Film Festival to see the premiere, but I still want to
know what motivated Mr. Morris to executive produce this bizarre film.

I would like to know what the pitch session was like. What did director Joshua Oppenheimer say to Mr.
Morris?

Joshua: So Errol, we’ve got this great premise where we take
brutish, unrepentant, sociopathic mass murderers and ask them to act out their
infamous kills, Hollywood style.That’s
right, Errol. These shameless but whacky guys are eager to write the scripts based
on actual murders they committed in Indonesia in the 60s. They’ll need proper
costuming, makeup, fancy sets, of course.That’s where you come in.

Errol: Tell me more…

Joshua: We film them reenacting their actual murders, but
with TOTAL artistic license. Film noir. Spaghetti western. You name it. I’m telling you that no dramatic genre
is sacred. I mean the whole thing is
going wind up being one big reality show – I mean documentary.

Errol: Will there be musical numbers, Joshua?

Joshua: There could be. Why not?

So my question to you, Mr. Morris is this: what part of that
premise sounded like a good documentary idea to you? I’m curious.

Let’s look at the backstory of The Act of Killing. In
Indonesia in 1965, Anwar Congo was a small time thug and big time Hollywood
film enthusiast who ingratiated himself with army death squad leaders by
selling them black market movie tickets.

Tired of the onerous task of doing their own killing, these
army leaders recruited Anwar and his friends to carry out the murders of
thousands of intellectuals, communists and ethnic Chinese and Indonesian
citizens at odds with the military. In this nasty piece of Indonesian history
millions were killed.

How did all this turn out? Death Squad veteran, Anwar Congo, has put
day-day murdering behind him and has long since become part of the right-wing
establishment in Indonesia, and now, thanks to director Joshua Oppenheimer, co-directors
Christine Cynn and Anonymous, he is a movie star too.Oops. Credit goes to that way-out Errol
Morris too. Oh and Werner Hertzog - long story. And yes, there really is a co-director credit
for Anonymous. What does that tell you?

According to press materials found on IMDB, “Anwar Congo and
his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms
in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodeling cowboys.”

And this from the film’s
web site: “THE ACT OF KILLING is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal
culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on
television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of
a soft shoe dance number.”

I know. Where did I put my open mind? Seriously, I have long
ago abandoned the notion that I have to like a film to appreciate its value. I teach films that I like a lot, including Mr. Death by Mr. Morris, and films I
dislike a lot, including Fog of War,
also by Mr. Morris. Send me a screener,
Mr. Morris.I’ll take a look at The Act of Killing. I will.

Readers: You can forget about seeing the trailer until after
the film premieres at the prestigious 2012 Toronto International Film Festival
this September 6-16. If you go to Toronto and see the film, please write and
tell me what you thought.

To be fair, I have included the director’s statement in toto.

NOTE OF INTENTION
By director Joshua Oppenheimer

"The Act of Killing reveals why violence we hope would be unimaginable is not
only imagined, but also routinely performed. It is an effort to understand the
moral vacuum that makes it possible for perpetrators of genocide to be
celebrated on public television with cheers and smiles. It is a call to
reexamine easy reassurances that we are the good guys fighting the bad guys,
just because we say so.

Some viewers may desire resolution by the end of the film, a successful
struggle for justice that results in changes in the balance of power, human
rights tribunals, reparations, and official apologies. The film alone cannot
create these changes, but this desire has been our inspiration as well, as we
seek to shed light on the darkest chapters of both the local and global human
story, and to express the real costs of blindness, expedience, and an inability
to control greed and the hunger for power in an increasingly unified world
society. This is not a story about Indonesia. This is a story about us all."

Wait – Wait - Wait.What was that last part? This is a story about all of us? See now, Joshua, that’s where you get me mad.
Will someone Errol Morris back on the phone?

Note to self: Cancel the bucket trip to Indonesia. These
guys are still alive and still in charge.